We flew out Thursday AM and back Sunday evening for Stephen and Jess’s wedding. I’d been dreading the flights this time around, but they were actually great. Henry threw an entire fistfull of buttons towards the end of the first flight, but was otherwise a relatively model two year old. He loved pouring ice between plastic cups – a 45 min activity. Awesome. He spent most of the flight home facing his seat and hopping, singing “jumping, jumping, jumping Heaveen!”, but that didn’t seem to really be hurting anyone, so we let it go, and after nearly an hour of ground delays during which Henry had to be buckled in, we felt like we were getting off easy. He loved the airport – we marveled over every “big airpeen!”, “ramp truck!”, “baggage train!” and bucket truck. We also got to go up and see the pilot (I think more as calm-the-nerves propaganda for the rest of the plane – we were flying on 9/11, sitting towards the back of the plane, and the stewardess was prattling on about little boys who get to see the cockpit as we walked all the way up the aisle and back. It WAS cool, though. Henry was very shy until he decided he’d like to “my Heaveen push buttons?!” – right about our cue to go back to our seats, I’d say!!) On the flight there, there was a sweet older lady sitting behind us. As everyone was waiting to get off the plane (and Henry was glued to the window watching the baggage trains), she apologized for not speaking English well (she was visiting her daughter all the way from China) and then demonstrated excellent English while saying what a good boy he was and what a nice face he had. On the trip home, again as we were all waiting to file off the plane, there was an older man who laughed at Henry opening and closing the window with gusto (we didn’t let him do it in the air, but thought it was okay for the last two minutes on the plane) and said funny things about two year olds. It’s amazing how much even one nice comment from a stranger helps on those cross country flights.
The wedding was lovely and happy – we had a great time. Such a great couple, and such a pretty spot and evening. I’m so glad we could be there. I’ll have to add pictures back in as I get access to them – we didn’t bring a camera.
Henry spent the evening at Kevin’s parents’ house with Stacey and Kirynn – I was so relieved and so grateful to find out that this plan was already in place. There are very few people I would leave Henry with when we’re traveling and while we headed out of state for the evening, but she’s one of them. Henry is still talking about the two of them non-stop, so it sounds like they had a blast. 🙂 Here he is warming up.
And approximately 12 minutes in, fast friends.
Saturday was our free day. (It was SUCH a fast trip – pity to be so rushed but Kevin has almost no vacation days and so this trip was the most we could do and still have time for the holiday travel), and we had fun at the house. Henry was a huge fan of the birthday Raffi CDs from Neen, and the one Grammy and Pop-Pop.
On the couch, working on the unwrapping:
Jonesing for “more noonik” on the boombox:
Other games – throwing his new Eagles football.
(This was before Tucker chewed it to bits. Henry’s been recounting the tale of “Darker ate Heaveen football! All gone!” with relish since then. He sounds less sad than impressed.) Also on that front, for the entire visit Henry has been very interested in “my check darker” and saying “cmon darker” every time he started heading to a different room – cute, cute. He was definitely more intimidated this visit but recovered quite gracefully, and got good at saying “no, stop!” when Tucker tried to hipcheck him out of the way (didn’t dissuade Tucker one bit, but at least an adult could come run interference).
Henry being tickled by Grammy.
The “riding Pop-pop” game was a huge hit, even if the other adults cringed a bit. Glee and growling.
Falling over.
Action shot.
Super brief pause followed by “… more high up?”
Action shot: fraction of a second of sitting still and listening to the music.
It was a little bit of a difficult visit sleep-wise, in that it was the first time he was too long for the pack and play. Kevin’s mom also had an air mattress, so we tried that, and it worked the first night. (We had it T’d into the closet, abutting the bed.) Saturday was more of a mess (nap and bedtime) – he spent a while exploring and then started jumping off the big bed onto the air mattress – he could nearly hit the back wall of the closet (yikes). He also figured out how to let himself out of the room (another yikes). Finally, in desperation, Kevin put him back in the so-short Pack’n’Play – he was asleep in about 10 min, all curled up, snug as a bug. The moral of the story was that he’d better not learn to climb out of the crib or else we’ll have to tie him to it. :-/ (This story was especially poignant since Brendan, Henry’s fellow two-year-old up the street, just started climbing out of his crib and now no longer sleeps at all, apparently. This trip’s sleep stuff was like a glimpse into a darker world.) On the flip side, Kevin and I slept wonderfully other than toddler shenanigans – Kevin’s parents re-did Neen’s old room last fall and this was our second visit with the wonderful new real bed (instead of the foldaway couch). I LOVE the new bed. Awesome sleep! And lovely room. They did such a great job with it.
Here’s one last airport shot when we landed in Seattle:
And the zombified kiddo (10 pm Seattle time, 1 am east coast time, with 1.5 naps in four days as backlog) watching the bags come down the baggage claim chute.
I was glad we had the stroller in a spot where he could get the good view – this picture is equally representative – each time he saw a new bag, he’d start swinging his feet at speed. He might be exhausted, but the “tootcases!! airport!” take some attending to!
